Hitchcock Quiz # 6 - 9 [by David Lehman]

(6) Which of the following is not an authentic Hitchcock moment?

-- Grace Kelly cozies up with Harper's Bazaar while her beau, nursing a broken leg, takes a nap
-- Raymond Burr signs a contract to play first base for the New York Yankees after the death of Gary Cooper
-- Ingrid Bergman offers her beau "a leg or a breast" as they stand on the terrace on a tropical evening
-- With one exception, everyone watching a tennis match moves his or her head as the movement of the ball dictates
-- Doris Day belts out Che Sera,Sera at a posh party peopled by diplomats in London

(7) "The better the villain, the better the film." Acknowledging that "better" is an elastic term, which of the following is the best villain? Discuss at least three.

(a) James Mason in "North by Northwest"
(b) The birds in "The Birds"--- Robert Walker in "Strangers on a Train"
(c) The American Nazis in "Saboteur"
(d) Claude Rains and his mother in "Notorious"
(e) Anthony Perkins and his mother in "Psycho"
(f) Ray Milland in "Dial M for Murder"
(g) Joseph Cotten in "Shadow of a Doubt"

What conclusions can we come to:
(a) bad guys tend to be guys, or guys with mother complexes, or enraged beasts
(b) "the more deranged -- Perkins, Walker -- the better"
(c) the "suave index" (Ray Milland, James Mason) makes the movies less threatening

(8) Which of the following does not qualify as a typical Hitchcock joke?

-- to cuff his hero and heroine, leave the room and lock the door
-- to pose as the fat man in a weight-reducing ad that is espied if not read on a lifeboat full of the survivors of a shipwreck
-- to employ Otto Preminger to play the commandant of a Nazi prisoner-of-war camp
-- to suggest the act of fornication by showing a speeding train enter a tunnel
-- to kill Kim Novak twice, in both cases at the top of the church tower at Mission San Juan Batista in California

(9) In the auction scene in North by Northwest, Cary Grant violates the hushed-room decorum by making wacky and contradictory bids in order to

-- attract attention because he is certified narcissist who thinks he is Cary Grant
-- attract attention and get ejected because the cops were preferable to the killers awaiting his exit
-- fulfill his part of the bargain with Ingrid Bergman, who has done her part by going to Brazil and enduring a near-lethal dose of poison administered slowly so it looks like sickness and not murder
-- warn about an imminent terrorist threat in a way that wouldn't panic the public because only one man present would understand the message
-- arouse the admiration of co-star Eva Maria Saint, who has aired her doubts about his skill as a comic actor

-- DL

Comments

[Justin Sager]

Not being certain of the meaning of "authentic" in the phrase "authentic Hitchcock moment," I will postpone answering that question and talk about the jokes instead:

-- to cuff his hero and heroine, leave the room and lock the door
-- to pose as the fat man in a weight-reducing ad that is espied if not read on a lifeboat full of the survivors of a shipwreck
-- to employ Otto Preminger to play the commandant of a Nazi prisoner-of-war camp
-- to suggest the act of fornication by showing a speeding train enter a tunnel
-- to kill Kim Novak twice, in both cases at the top of the church tower at Mission San Juan Batista in California

Obviously 3 is not a Hitchcock joke. It was bot Hitchcock but Billy Wilder who cast Otto Preminger in Stalag 17, and that is certainly an example of a Billy Wilder jest. But the other four are all echt Hitchcock. To pose as the fat man was his very clever way of appearing in "Lifeboat." The train entering the tunnel at the end of "North by Northwest" is a pretty broad joke but also an elegant finale, completing a metaphor introduced earlier in the film. I believe that H. handcuffed the hero and heroine of "The 39 Steps" so their feigned mutual antipathy would be less feigned. More complicated than sadism, erotic fixation, and narcissism is what happens to Kim Novak in "Vertigo." Does anyone else have thoughts?

[Claudia Langland]

Well, Raymond Burr does not sign a contract to play first base for the New York Yankees after the death of Gary Cooper in "Pride of the Yankees," which was not a Hitchcock movie. So professor I think your "red herrings" are pretty obvious yet pointing us in a certain direction -- for example, reminding us that Raymond Burr does appear in a Hitchcock movie, "Rear Window." (He is the villain, but he was always a heavy until he got to be Perry Mason). The other question or thought has to do with Gary Cooper: just being himself he would have been a perfect Hitchcock hero.
I agree with Justin re Kim Novak in "Vertigo." It's wild. That she dies twice in the same picture indicates an overlap of death and sexuality that is scary.